Study pegs Chicago’s traffic as nation’s second-worst – an improvement over last year

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Every morning and every evening Katie Hurley makes the commute from Indiana to
Chicago, spending about an hour and 15 minutes in her car each way.

“There
is always traffic on Lake Shore Drive going south,” said Hurley, who lives in
Highland, about 30 miles southeast of Chicago’s Loop.

“What
bothers me is that traffic reports most of the time are conflicting: I listen
to WBBM and NPR stations for traffic reports, but they are not always clear and
consistent. The boards on highways telling traffic time are not accurate: I
wonder who oversees their accuracy.”

Besides
traffic reports not being helpful, Hurley has not noticed her commute being any
shorter than in the past.

An
official survey released this week backs her up, saying that Chicago commuters
are spending an hour more on the roads than they did last year.

The
good news, however, is that Chicago is not ranked first again for worst traffic
congestion in the nation.

This
past year, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Texas
Transportation Institute, every driver spent about 21 minutes a day in
traffic.

The
survey also found Washington had worse traffic than Chicago, which came in at
No. 2, followed by Los Angeles, Houston, New York and San Francisco. Last in
the list, at No. 15, was Detroit.

Despite
drivers not feeling the improvement, “our numbers take into account all freeways and major
arterial streets,” said David L. Schrank, associate research scientist at the
Texas Transportation Institute. Schrank, who contributed to the study, said, “[The
study] might include the worst or the best roads.”

Talking about solutions to traffic problems in Chicago, Emily Tapia-Lopez,
president of Transport Chicago steering committee said, “We have not identified
remedies but we have identified the needs. The goal is to manage infrastructure
improving the local economy.”

Transport Chicago includes members from CTA, Metra, Chicago Metropolitan Agency
for Planning, University of Illinois at Chicago, Regional Transportation
Authority, University of Illinois at Chicago and Cambridge Systematics.

Professor Laurence Rohter, who teaches civil architecture and environmental
engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and also a Transport
Chicago steering committee member, said the city needs to build connected
bicycle paths that are segregated from automobile traffic and are all-weather.

“Due
to the weather in Chicago,” Rohter said, “it must be all-weather. It would look
something like the Minneapolis skyway system.”

Tapia-Lopez
has her own suggestion for dealing with Chicago’s congestion.

“The solution is transit.” Tapia-Lopez said. She rides a bike in the summer and
uses transit the rest of the year from the Bronzeville area to the Loop.